d to me ruin. Gratefully we
resumed our business and remained for seven weeks in Virginia City and
vicinity, where we had most abundant success, for in spite of rock and
ledge, sand and tornado, the country abounds in full purses and warm
hearts.

At Carson City we found an United States Mint, where a gentleman
designated Saturday afternoon, when the machinery was stopped, as a proper
time to give us the benefit of a full examination, allowing me to touch
everything, and giving a satisfactory explanation of the "modus operandi"
of money making.

We went to Battle Mountain, where we took the stage for Austin, ninety
miles distant. We had nine passengers and twelve hundred weight of bullion
in the bottom of the stage, together with innumerable satchels, umbrellas
and brown-paper parcels. In this cramped position we traveled from one
o'clock in the afternoon until nine o'clock the next morning, an
infliction that was only rendered endurable by having a relay of horses
every fifteen miles, and being permitted to rest upon terra firma during
the changes.

At Austin we unexpectedly met in the family of the hotel proprietor
friends of Hattie, from Illinois. The kind host proved to me a "Good
Samaritan," for finding myself unable to walk he carried me in his arms to
the hotel, and safely entrusted me to the ministering care of his kind
family.

Desiring to cross over the country to Eureka, and the stage not venturing
to the eminence upon which stood our hotel, we were obliged to go to the
express office to take passage, where we were shocked at the sight of
three maudlin men in an advanced stage of inebriety, throwing showers of
silver money upon the ground, and ostentatiously allowing the crowd to
gather it up; while we were still more shocked to find that they were to
be inside passengers, and our only companions.

With these three men and their "fade mecum," "the whiskey bottle," we
started on our journey that bleak, winter morning. Two of them soon became
so beastly drunk that their bottle fell out of the stage door and was
lost beyond recovery. Their companion remained for a time sufficiently
sober to prevent them from falling upon us in their constant oscillations,
but, by the time they had reached the convalescent stage, he became so
nauseated that it was necessary to hold his head out of the window for
relief, and, finally yielding to the soporific influence of his drams, he
laid himself at full length upon our fe